4 ms·

If consumers are fine with the pre-existing software and will never try to use anything else, why do we lock them out though? Something doesn't add up.

charcircuit 8mo ago
>why do we lock them out though? It reduces security, expands attack surface, reputational damage from people complaining about their phones bricking doing something unsupported.
- tavavex 8mo ago
  That's how all these vendors justify their actions once they decide it's time to kill off their competition and impose arbitrary limitations. But how real is this "damage", actually? How big do you think the overlap between 'users who want to install custom operating systems', 'users who have no idea what they're doing' and 'users who would loudly complain after an obvious mistake on their own part' is? The #1 source of reputational damage for vendors is people breaking something within their controlled environments. The bar to run a custom OS is already so high for average people that it will never matter or be a social engineering attack vector, just because of how niche it is. We've been able to run anything on PCs for over 40 years, custom firmware for phones goes back at least 25 years, and despite all of this, the world hasn't gone up in flames yet. The security pressure exists, but it's minimal compared to everything else. The real reasons are profit-driven.
  - charcircuit 8mo ago
    >The bar to run a custom OS is already so high for average people that it will never matter or be a social engineering attack vector >We've been able to run anything on PCs for over 40 years And the PC platform has had terrible security. Do not use it as an example of everything being fine. You are forgetting the malware for PCs which would spread by writing a custom operating system on a removal media. Then that removable media is plugged into another PC and when that PC boots up it boots that operating system which goes ahead and infects the OS installed to the hard disk along with any other removable media.
    - tavavex 8mo ago
      I'm using PCs as an example precisely because they're not absolutely secure, yet despite this, everything is going fine, because the vectors of attack are so esoteric. Tell me, when's the last time you've heard of an attack like what you described? Would you say that these attacks are equal in scale and threat to the countless times when millions of people were endangered through a botched OS security update, sandbox escape exploits, and other normal ways of doing malware? Is this a scalable attack that actually happens day-to-day? Is this something you worry about as much as securing your PC from normal exploits from the internet? And your example is ignoring two things that make it even more absurd. One, I've never seen a computer that will auto-boot into removable media, the default is always existing media first, and changing that requires user input. But also, if you have direct physical access to the PC, you don't need these complex basically-nonexistent boot exploits. If you have physical access, it's already over. You can invisibly MitM the network, monitor, keyboard/mouse inputs even if the device doesn't allow custom systems. You can wait for the system to be logged in, then take any data you need. If you're a government actor, you may even have devices that extract unencrypted data from almost anything using zero-days, even the most 'secure' computers or phones.
      - charcircuit 8mo ago
        >everything is going fine Stealer malware is running rampant on the PC platform. It is not going fine. >One, I've never seen a computer that will auto-boot into removable media Look into late 20th century PCs. They are designed to boot from a floppy disk first. >But also, if you have direct physical access to the PC It does not take physical access to write to a floppy disk.
        tavavex 8mo ago
        > Stealer malware is running rampant on the PC platform. It exists. Arbitrary words like "rampant" let you skew the conversation in your favor with no data. In what I see, malware has only gotten rarer, and most people are never affected by anything like it. And then 99% of stealers get there by asking the user for permissions at the system level or using sandbox escape exploits, even in fully secure systems. > Look into late 20th century PCs. They are designed to boot from a floppy disk first. Yes. Luckily, we wised up and this is no longer the case. And we even managed to do it without locking users into what <VENDOR> has decided was the best and only choice for them! In addition to already being fixed, it's just completely irrelevant today. When have you last seen a PC with a floppy drive, let alone one that people continue feeding floppies to this day? Are you saying that you consider people writing modern floppy boot malware and then injecting those floppies into organizations running legacy computers an actual, realistic threat? > It does not take physical access to write to a floppy disk. It takes physical access to insert it, and a whole lot of indirect IRL access to sneak infected media into whatever business is still using them. I'm not saying these things aren't bad. I maintain my previous point - the 'drawbacks' of open computing are minuscule, but real. The fact that you had to go all the way back to floppies, boot malware and physical attacks proves the point of how esoteric it all is. The internet is the real killer, and it affects every platform. The counterexamples come off as the kind of improbable justifications that every software megacorporation breaks out every time they want to lock down something "for your safety".
- realusername 8mo ago
  Do they even care about reputational damage? Since you picked the phone as an example, right now when I search for ChatGPT in the Play Store, the top app is a fake app with a counterfeit logo. Is it really this platform which was supposed to improve security?
  - charcircuit 8mo ago
    Play Store moderation is imperfect and adversarial. That is a harder problem then protecting the boot chain.
    - realusername 8mo ago
      It's not even moderation, the Play Store manually put results before of the actual results in exchange of money. It's a harder problem for sure but harder because Google earns money from the problem.

charcircuit 8mo ago

>why do we lock them out though? It reduces security, expands attack surface, reputational damage from people complaining about their phones bricking doing something unsupported.

tavavex 8mo ago
That's how all these vendors justify their actions once they decide it's time to kill off their competition and impose arbitrary limitations. But how real is this "damage", actually? How big do you think the overlap between 'users who want to install custom operating systems', 'users who have no idea what they're doing' and 'users who would loudly complain after an obvious mistake on their own part' is? The #1 source of reputational damage for vendors is people breaking something within their controlled environments. The bar to run a custom OS is already so high for average people that it will never matter or be a social engineering attack vector, just because of how niche it is. We've been able to run anything on PCs for over 40 years, custom firmware for phones goes back at least 25 years, and despite all of this, the world hasn't gone up in flames yet. The security pressure exists, but it's minimal compared to everything else. The real reasons are profit-driven.
- charcircuit 8mo ago
  >The bar to run a custom OS is already so high for average people that it will never matter or be a social engineering attack vector >We've been able to run anything on PCs for over 40 years And the PC platform has had terrible security. Do not use it as an example of everything being fine. You are forgetting the malware for PCs which would spread by writing a custom operating system on a removal media. Then that removable media is plugged into another PC and when that PC boots up it boots that operating system which goes ahead and infects the OS installed to the hard disk along with any other removable media.
  - tavavex 8mo ago
    I'm using PCs as an example precisely because they're not absolutely secure, yet despite this, everything is going fine, because the vectors of attack are so esoteric. Tell me, when's the last time you've heard of an attack like what you described? Would you say that these attacks are equal in scale and threat to the countless times when millions of people were endangered through a botched OS security update, sandbox escape exploits, and other normal ways of doing malware? Is this a scalable attack that actually happens day-to-day? Is this something you worry about as much as securing your PC from normal exploits from the internet? And your example is ignoring two things that make it even more absurd. One, I've never seen a computer that will auto-boot into removable media, the default is always existing media first, and changing that requires user input. But also, if you have direct physical access to the PC, you don't need these complex basically-nonexistent boot exploits. If you have physical access, it's already over. You can invisibly MitM the network, monitor, keyboard/mouse inputs even if the device doesn't allow custom systems. You can wait for the system to be logged in, then take any data you need. If you're a government actor, you may even have devices that extract unencrypted data from almost anything using zero-days, even the most 'secure' computers or phones.
    - charcircuit 8mo ago
      >everything is going fine Stealer malware is running rampant on the PC platform. It is not going fine. >One, I've never seen a computer that will auto-boot into removable media Look into late 20th century PCs. They are designed to boot from a floppy disk first. >But also, if you have direct physical access to the PC It does not take physical access to write to a floppy disk.
      - tavavex 8mo ago
        > Stealer malware is running rampant on the PC platform. It exists. Arbitrary words like "rampant" let you skew the conversation in your favor with no data. In what I see, malware has only gotten rarer, and most people are never affected by anything like it. And then 99% of stealers get there by asking the user for permissions at the system level or using sandbox escape exploits, even in fully secure systems. > Look into late 20th century PCs. They are designed to boot from a floppy disk first. Yes. Luckily, we wised up and this is no longer the case. And we even managed to do it without locking users into what <VENDOR> has decided was the best and only choice for them! In addition to already being fixed, it's just completely irrelevant today. When have you last seen a PC with a floppy drive, let alone one that people continue feeding floppies to this day? Are you saying that you consider people writing modern floppy boot malware and then injecting those floppies into organizations running legacy computers an actual, realistic threat? > It does not take physical access to write to a floppy disk. It takes physical access to insert it, and a whole lot of indirect IRL access to sneak infected media into whatever business is still using them. I'm not saying these things aren't bad. I maintain my previous point - the 'drawbacks' of open computing are minuscule, but real. The fact that you had to go all the way back to floppies, boot malware and physical attacks proves the point of how esoteric it all is. The internet is the real killer, and it affects every platform. The counterexamples come off as the kind of improbable justifications that every software megacorporation breaks out every time they want to lock down something "for your safety".
realusername 8mo ago
Do they even care about reputational damage? Since you picked the phone as an example, right now when I search for ChatGPT in the Play Store, the top app is a fake app with a counterfeit logo. Is it really this platform which was supposed to improve security?
- charcircuit 8mo ago
  Play Store moderation is imperfect and adversarial. That is a harder problem then protecting the boot chain.
  - realusername 8mo ago
    It's not even moderation, the Play Store manually put results before of the actual results in exchange of money. It's a harder problem for sure but harder because Google earns money from the problem.